Last school year, a senior team took first place, and a freshman team and a senior team tied for second place at the in-school Battle of the Books (BOTB) competition. In turn, the in-school competition’s third-place team, Page Turners, could not compete at the district level, as the top three teams filled the spots available for the state competition.
The Page Turners included Sreshta Mitta ‘26, Naisha Sonawala ‘26, Shriaditi Kancherla ‘26, Priscilla Go ‘26, Laiba Nadeem ‘27, and Shannon Somes ‘27.
“We were upset when we didn’t get to go to the state competition last year, of course,” said Somes. “But we were proud of having been able to get third place. We wanted to work even harder this year to be able to go to the state competition.”
The team, devastated by their loss, felt a surge of motivation to work even harder, using their experience to help identify areas for improvement to secure a spot for states this year.
Their primary concern was the uneven distribution of the books. For instance, some students read significantly more than others, resulting in certain books getting more coverage than others. This posed a problem because if questions were asked about details in “uncovered” books, the team would be unsure in their response, causing them to waste a lot of time reviewing each book by title to find the exact book with the exact detail the question asked.
As a solution, each member had to have read as much of their books as possible and come prepared with several questions on their books, which were sent to the team captain Mitta ahead of time. The questions targeted skills such as chapter titles, settings, characteristics of events/characters, and any peculiar details that stuck out. Mitta then updated the group’s shared Quizlet flashcard set with the new questions before each meeting for the team to review.
During these frequent meetings, Mitta used a stopwatch to ensure the team had an answer in the strict thirty-second time frame.
“These practices helped build consistency and confidence in our team’s speed. By practicing under the time limit, we were able to simulate the pressure felt during the competition,” said Sonawala.
These meetings paid off big time, as Page Turners were able to maintain second place throughout the in-school competition, then dubbed as “EDISON 2.”
The team was eager to compete against the other two Edison teams and schools in the state competition. On April 29 at Passaic County Technical Vocational School (PCTVS), EDISON 2 competed in Wayne, New Jersey.
At this competition, students had to identify a book based on specific details from a novel. The nine books for the 2024-2025 year were as follows:
Love from A to Z by S.K. Ali
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas
Michigan vs. the Boys by Carrie S. Allen
The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim
You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
WarCross by Marie Lu
All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
On the morning of the competition, EDISON 2 felt a lot of tension and anticipation.
“It was our first time qualifying for the State Competition, and I was worried as I had a bad migraine episode that day too,” said Kancherla. Despite the feelings of nervousness and worry, the team did share a high level of enthusiasm as a last-minute review session was held on the bus and at PCTVS before the rounds began.
After intense rounds of trivia with other schools in Central Jersey, EDISON 2 was up against one of J.P. Stevens’ teams for the chance to secure first place at the competition. As a crazy coincidence, the final question was one of Kancherla’s self-made questions from their many earlier review sessions about AC/DC, a rock band in Michigan vs. the Boys, which they were able to easily answer.
“Overall, I think our team dynamic was also more solidified, and everyone was driven to win. I’m really happy with the turnout of this year’s competition,” said Mitta.